Beautiful Wreck is a time travel love story set in a cold 22nd century and in Viking era Iceland.

In a bleak future built on virtual reality, Ginn is a romantic who yearns for something real. She designs environments for people who play at being Vikings. But when her project goes awry, she’s stranded in the actual 10th century, on a storybook farm in Viking Iceland. In short, there she finds her epic love.

When forces rise against them to keep them apart, Ginn is called on to decide—will she give up the brutal and beautiful reality of the past? Or will she have the courage to traverse time and become more of a Viking than she ever imagined?

Italy has beckoned travelers for centuries: for its beauty, its art, architecture and history. Also for its people and their scrupulous attention to food and wine. In 1962, Marlene falls in love with Italy, igniting a passion that lasts a lifetime. This book celebrates the solitary adventure of a woman in the country of a thousand suns. Like many others, she seeks self discovery. With no reservations and minimal command of the language, it’s freestyle all the way. She finds gutsy qualities in herself and affirms the mystic connection many long to have with Italy’s long, glorious past.

Alone with Michelangelo is a hardcover book, with numerous photos (some color and some black and white) as well as paintings of Italy by an artist who lived there for ten years.There is an extensive index regarding specific art and architecture discussed as well as monuments in various cities mentioned in the book. It also has a list of Sources and Suggested Reading Material about Italy. No longer in print, but the author has copies available.

Anne Hendren is the author of a new book, A Dream of Good and Evil, a mystery published by Ring of Fire Publishing.

Personal tragedy, workplace scheming and professional failure – that is the life facing architect Loisann Cooper. Until she regains control. A Dream of Good and Evil from novelist Anne Hendren tracks Loisann’s remarkable tale of personal redemption. You’ll never see crime, punishment and architecture the same way again.

The Midwest Book Review called the novel “…a snazzy twist of storytelling, much recommended.”

Oregon Writers Colony will host two writers and small press publishing mentors, Matt Love of Nestucca Spit Press and Laura Stanfill of Forest Avenue Press, the weekend of June 6-8, 2014, at the OWC Colonyhouse in Rockaway Beach.

The spring Writer(s) in the House weekend is a chance for writers of all levels to enhance their writing, build their writing platform, and learn how to publish, distribute, and promote their work.

The Writer in the House program is a uniquely intimate opportunity for writers to get inspiration, camaraderie, and quiet space for their creative writing process.

Small Press Semi-Summit Schedule

Friday, June 6

5:30 p.m. Check-in Starts. The Writer in the House volunteer will check in and greet Colonyhouse residents staying for the weekend, and give you a brief house orientation.

7- 8:30 p.m., Workshop. Matt Love will get writers warmed up in his “Creating a Metaphor for Your Writing” workshop.

Creating a metaphor for your writing life can be a powerfully transforming experience and one that provides meaning and form for your literary aspirations.

In this class, participants will construct a metaphor through a series of thinking and writing exercises. Love has employed this exercise with writers of all ages and aspirations, journalists, teachers, administrators, inmates, and marine science professionals with great success.

Saturday, June 7

Early Morning to 10 a.m. Breakfast on your own.

10 a.m. to Noon, Workshop. Matt Love will riff on his favorite Oregon metaphor: rain. Rain is ubiquitous in Western Oregon, especially on the coast, but many Oregon writers include it only as an afterthought.

In this workshop, writers will participate in a creative thinking and writing workshop where they confront rain in non-meteorological terms with the intent of synthesizing their writing process and creative life.

2 p.m. to 4 p.m., Workshop: Matt Love and Laura Stanfill will discuss “Producing and Marketing Sustainable Literature,” followed by a question-and-answer session.

Both Love and Stanfill eschewed traditional publishing models and started their own presses because they wanted to put the books they loved out into the world. As diligent, multitasking writers, publishers, publicists, and editors, both Love and Stanfill have learned lessons about how to promote their authors, books, and themselves.

They will tell their stories of starting their presses, how to avoid pits and potholes along the way, and their opinions for best practices for small press authors and businesses.

Dinner on your own.

Evening: Get Feedback on Your Query Letter and/or First Pages of Your Story (Colonyhouse Resident Participants Only). During the evening, Laura Stanfill will work with full-weekend participants on their query letters and/or the first pages of their prose stories. Please bring correctly formatted, typed pages for Laura to read and bring a spirit of openness for her expert feedback and suggestions.

Sunday June 8

Morning: Breakfast on your own and check-out.

How to Participate

This Writer(s) in the House Program offers various levels of attendance.

Colonyhouse stays are limited to 8 participants, and the writing workshops are limited to 15 total participants. Colonyhouse has four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Overnight accommodations include a shared bedroom and shared use of kitchen, bathrooms, and living room.

Cost for the full weekend for Colonyhouse residents includes all workshops, Saturday lunch, one-on-one consultation, and the two-night stay. The price is $150 for OWC members, $190 for nonmembers (includes a one-year OWC membership).

Non-overnighting participants may participate in the selection of workshops: Friday night workshop “Creating a Metaphor for Your Writing”: $15 for OWC members, $20 for nonmembers.

About Matt Love

In 2002 Oregon Coast author Matt Love established Nestucca Spit Press (NSP), an independent press that publishes books exclusively about Oregon and distributes only through independent bookstores, live events and a website. He did it because he wanted to share his writing with an audience. Twelve years later, NSP has sold 20,000 books, and several titles became statewide bestsellers and sold out their press runs. In 2009, Love won the Oregon Literary Arts’ Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for his contributions to Oregon history and literature. His latest book is Of Walking in RainOf Walking in Rain, 2013.

About Laura Stanfill

Laura Stanfill is the publisher of Forest Avenue Press, which received a 2014 Oregon Literary Fellowship. As the press’ first project, Laura edited and compiled the bestselling local anthology “Brave on the Page: Oregon Writers on Craft and the Creative Life.” Stevan Allred’s A Simplified Map of the Real World was named a #1 book of 2013 on the annual Powell’s Staff Top 5s lists, and two new releases, Dan Berne’s debut novel, The Gods of Second Chances, and the Oregon short story anthology, The Night, and the Rain, and the River, have received accolades from Northwest writers and reviewers. As a community newspaper editor, Laura earned numerous statewide awards for her writing and editing skills.

Ellen Gregory

By Patricia Barnhart

When I was a child in the late 1950s, the community I lived in was far removed from the world as it is today. It was true that polio was still rendering public swimming pools vacant and iron lungs occupied. But to its credit Paper Mate had just perfected the leak-free pen, “Give ‘Em Hell, Harry” was in the White House, and rock-n-roll, amidst a flurry of new and exciting words and beats, gave us kids a peek into what our parents considered sin. A little something for everybody.

The neighborhoods too were different. For one thing, they existed. Families lived in houses that were built, not from a standard book of blueprints, but from the ideas and financial abilities of those who would occupy them. There was no speculation, no flipping. Folks lovingly built or had built a structure, often unassuming, where they could raise a family, wash their Chevies on weekends, and as a matter of course, get to know the people next door. It was a handshake world back then. And it was in those times that I came of age. Even now I tend to see that summer through child-colored glasses, rather than the clear lenses of knowing that I put on for the first time that year.

There was, on our block, a house, cottage really, that had stood vacant for some time. The stigma of its previous tenant had rendered it suspect and therefore difficult to sell or even rent. The prevailing rumor was that the last occupant had been a witch. In whispered tones the speculation sprinted from eye of newt to a traditional familiar in the form of a sleek, black cat. I knew nothing of the former, but the latter, well, I had seen the feline companion of Jaydin, for that was her name, many times in the garden at the side of her cottage, twining itself around her legs and once leaping into her waiting arms. I did not know the woman; she belonged to the boys of the neighborhood. They adored her and left blossoms on her fence braces whenever they could. Wildflowers plucked from vacant lots or sometimes cosmos or snapdragons stolen from their mothers’ soil.

Jaydin had repaid the young men’s devotion with tales of enchantment and iced tea. If she removed the occasional wart or dispatched an especially nasty bully for her adoring followers, there really was no proof. It was the kind of fanciful tale that often exists on its own, with no basis in reality. Certainly, Wendell, reportedly one of the recipients of the white magic, never confirmed nor denied it. As for me, none of this was relevant. Growing up “girl” in the 50’s was enough of a challenge without adding the possible existence of witchery. I was occupied with carving out an identity for myself with parents who constantly said the sky was the limit, while living in a town where the prevailing expectations for women favored marriage, soap operas, and family. In that order.

My first glimpse of Ellen Gregory, the new occupant of the tainted cottage, was on a Sunday afternoon. A Bekins van had pulled up to the vacant house two down from ours. It was mid-June and the movers ferrying chairs and couches from curb to cottage had big loops of sweat stains under their arms. And right there, in amongst them, like a director in a play, arms fluttering, cautions being given, was a creature the likes of which our simplistic town had never seen. She was a bird of paradise in a flock of starlings, the lone orchid in a sea of dandelions. She was magnificent!

I was a polite child, taught never to pester, although I was always given full credence in my own home. I knew it might be considered intrusive, but I went anyway. I stood back, near the edge of the property, and watched as this woman, this vision of color and movement and surety, fairly vibrated with energy from mover to mover, from road to house, then back again. Her dress was calf-length, fuchsia in color, a cloud of light silk spilling, swirling about her. Around her neck she wore a chartreuse feather boa that took on a life of its own, trembling like the wings of small birds. Her shoes were not sensible — four inch stilettos the exact color of her neck piece. She glanced at me once, lifted her bangled hand, fluttered the fingers, then once again returned her attention to the furniture and her new house. I stayed there until the van drove away and the front door was closed. Then I went home.

The next day was Monday and since it was the first week of summer vacation, I was free. Just as there was a band of boys in our neighborhood — twelve and thirteen-year-olds — there was also a loose-knit bevy of girls, slightly younger and therefore rendered by age and gender uncool to hang out with except by others of their own kind. Wendell was the undeclared leader of the boys and my closest kid neighbor. At eleven I was on the cusp of an age-appropriate friendship with him. Sometimes we would speak over the back fence that separated our two homes. Most of the time, especially when his friends were over, Wendell ignored me. Monday was such a morning. No words came floating over the wooden partition even though I could hear him moving about in his yard, so I took myself down the road to a nearby creek where I was allowed to play unsupervised. The waters were shallow, barely covering the moss-slick rocks. Later in the season they would dry up entirely. There were no fish, just an occasional water skipper that could provide me with hours of intrigue. Those were simpler times.

I was joined mid-day by two of my friends, sisters from a block away. We splashed our way through another hour, then headed back for some lunch, our stream exploration having rendered us tired and hungry. It was then that I remembered our new neighbor and I asked my companions if they’d seen her yet. They had not. So it was decided to overshoot my driveway in favor of a quick peek to see if she was up and about. My description had intrigued them and my friends were as eager to catch sight of the newcomer as I.

And there she was. Sitting on her front porch in what was, no doubt, the only rattan chair for miles. Her costume, for from the beginning I thought of her as dressing for a daily part, was a light blue, made of some wonderful material I had never seen before. It draped itself, sleeveless, clinging, to her figure in soft folds. A pastel lightweight scarf just a shade darker circled her neck. And she said to us in a voice that both whispered and carried the distance, “Ladies, how kind of you to come visiting. May I offer you some of my shade and perhaps a soft drink?”

Up close she was just as exotic as her clothing, with bold, sculpted features, large dark eyes, dazzlingly auburn hair, full lips. Her eyebrows were tweezed and darkened, cheeks blushed tastefully with rouge. She was beautiful and she said her name was Ellen Gregory and she was glad to make our acquaintance.

When it came time to tell our names, my friends blurted out Jenny and Jackie Bowerman. As for me, I hated my name. I hesitated. Ellen tilted her head at me and waited. “Izette, ma’am,” I finally answered. “Oh, dear,” she said, frowning slightly. “You’re most definitely not an Izette! We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?” To this day I can remember the heat in my face, the flames on my cheeks, the bone-deep shame of being saddled with an unlovely moniker dredged up from some old family genealogy. “No, no, no, that just won’t do.” She frowned slightly, placed a long, lacquered fingernail against her chin and tapped as she appraised me. “You have lovely skin, young lady, with just enough freckles to save you from great beauty. Great beauty, as I’m sure you know, is more trouble than it’s worth. No, you need a name that is just as pretty as you are, but unique.” Her eyes became unfocused as she thought, and as she thought, my friends and I were spellbound, caught up in the momentousness of the occasion. I was being reborn!

“I have it!” she announced. “A bit of your old name, for something that horrid must come from a depraved sense of family history and family should not be denied regardless of its insensitivity. Something old and something new. Izetta! See how that extra vowel adds a new dimension? Izetta has a lilt to it! And I don’t believe I’ve heard it before, so it is something we made up, and if that doesn’t make it special, I don’t know what does! So nice to meet you Jenny and Jackie and Izetta! My name is Ellen Gregory, but please, I feel we’re going to be great friends; call me Ellen.” I had been christened! And her dazzling smile was my confirmation.

From then on Izetta was who I was. I corrected everyone until my new name became second nature by dint of repetition and it was if I had never been anyone else. My parents, I’m sure, were amused but played the game as well. And they could not deny that with my sudden and unexpected new name, came a confidence that had not been there before. If I took to wearing scarves in homage to my mentor, well, it was just part of the transformation.

The days of summer lengthened then began to grow shorter. The heat stayed with us and my companions and I spent hours on Ellen’s front porch. Between frosty glasses of ginger ale and girl talk we did become friends with the odd woman in the tastefully outrageous attire. Shy at first, we learned to trust her with our questions about life, something of which she surely knew. Questions we could not ask our mothers, Ellen always answered. Honestly and without judgment. She treated us like the adult women we so desperately wanted to be. At the critical juncture of adolescence, our budding breasts, our roller coaster emotions, our unformed but forming selves cried out for nurture, for explanation. Ellen gave us what she could and she gave it with respect. She gave us pride in being young and female and it was a gift we treasured.

Our days would begin, often as not, at her front door and would end there too. In between was the creek, a back yard — my friends’ or mine, it didn’t matter. The bond that Jenny and her sister Jackie and I had before that summer was strengthened along with our developing sense of self. For the first time we were mistresses of our own universes and we had Ellen, she of the haute couture, the endless and varied neckwear and jewelry, to thank.

And thank her we did. We took to leaving stemmed flowers on her fence much like Wendell and his band of boys had left Jaydin. And I don’t doubt for a moment that we loved our patroness any less than they had loved theirs.

It was another Sunday. My parents and I were just getting back from church. There were two police cruisers at Ellen’s cottage, parked near her front gate, lights flashing. From the front door she emerged, flanked by two officers. She carried herself with dignity. When an officer pushed her into the back seat of one of the squad cars, her glorious, red hair fell to the curb. It was a wig. Her shining, sunset locks were not her own and she was revealed — bald, but unbowed. She reached down, grasped her hair, and with a quiet resolve that bordered on nobility, refitted the shocking blaze to her head. She looked up then, saw me watching, wiggled her fingers in what was to be a gesture of goodbye. As I stood there, the blue and red lights disappeared down our street, away from my neighborhood, and out of my life.

Her name was not Ellen, of course, but Allen — Allen Gregory Dupree. Ellen, for that is what I insist on calling her even to this day, was a person of infinite kindness who asked little but to be allowed to live her life as the gender she preferred rather than the one she had been born with. The endless scarves hid the lump in her throat, her Adam’s apple that would have given her away.

#

We heard later that a policeman from several towns over bragged to one of our own officers that they had run one of those cross-dressing, Nancy-boys, out of their community a couple of months previous. The description matched that of Ellen. Our officers and the local selectmen met and decided that in our town such an anomaly was not to be accepted. They used different words. Ellen was driven to the city limits and allowed to exit the car, to make her way to the next town and the next and the next in a kind of never ending search for tolerance. Later that same week, a Bekins van came and hauled away all of her possessions.

And so it was that a week later, I received in the mail a package addressed to Izetta Collins. When I opened it and searched through the gauzy paper, I found the chartreuse boa. I lifted it out and watched as the rustle of air once again turned it into a thousand tiny wings that flew on and on.